Working in the Wonder Studio: Creative Spirit

This month, the 5^th grade girls have taken over the Wonder Studio.  It is interesting to me how each grade level has a different style of working and creating.  The 3^rd graders love to make big, complicated projects involving large boxes and long tubes.  The 4^th graders loved to work in wood and pompoms.  They also are masters of the hot glue gun.  I’m not sure why this occurs.  I plan on studying this phenomenon more and take detailed notes next school year.  It just tickles me to see what different groups and different individual girls do with the same assortment of materials.  Also,  their request for new materials is interesting.  The 3^rd graders requested chalkboards, chalk paint and stickers.  The 4^th graders wanted nails, screws, drills, hammers, and lots of wood.  The 5^th graders used all the recyclable material and wanted bright colored springtime paint. 

I have noticed in the last few years that the 5^th grade students love to fabricate small intricate items during their final Wonder Studio sessions.  I’m not sure if it’s because they want to be able to quickly complete projects that they can take home as mementoes of their Primary School years, or that they are working on a math PBL unit on Tiny Houses, so their minds just naturally go to the miniature.  However, most of the students are making objects other than items for their tiny houses, even though I bought materials that would allow them to construct tiny furniture and other accoutrements.

Of course, the girls are much more creative and intrepid than I am.  Where I’m thinking of predictable home goods and furnishings, they are thinking of all things fanciful and intricately small.  I often am so busy supplying children with various craft items, that I don’t get to witness the process they go through to make their imaginings.  This week, I tried to pay more close attention to what they were working on and how they went about the creative process.  Amalia was working diligently gathering cardboard, measuring and cutting it into obligated rectangles.  Then she glued them together and painted them black.  The object she created looked a lot like a coffin, but I wasn’t sure, so I asked.  And indeed, Amalia made a coffin for her friend’s plant that died.  I laughed when she told me.  I couldn’t have imagined to create something like that.  And it made me smile to see Amalia, measure and build because she is tentative in math class and thinks she is not good at math.  I reflected to her that creating the coffin took a lot of mathematical thinking and she looked up at me and smiled.

Another student, Francie, asked me where the bowl of gems were, and I dutifully brought her a basket of gems that someone had gifted us.  Francie spent several minutes plucking through the basket  to find all the amber-colored gems.  Then she hot glued them to a styrofoam ball.  After that she took some small balsa wood ovals to make wings.  When I commented how pretty it was.  Francie, who has a long fascination with Harry Potter,  explained that she created the Golden Snitch, the flying sphere used in Quidditch. 

Coco, who is extremely quiet and shy in class, finds her voice in the Wonder Studio.  She leads the way in many projects, and easily moves from craft to craft helping her classmates.  She is truly at home in the Wonder Studio.  First, she worked with Millie to make fencing miniatures. Then she worked with Lucy to create a Coco and Coco Sweet Treats, complete with swaying coconut trees.  It was been wonderful to watch Coco grow as a leader through her fine crafting skills.

While this all was happening, Linnie was putting her keen engineering skills to work.  In the beginning of the week, she figured out how to make a sliding glass door for her tiny house.  Then she started to work on a bookcase for her living room.  As a 3rd Grader, Linnie was afraid to try anything new.  She often wandered around the Wonder Studio not knowing what to do. She was afraid to use the hot glue gun ,and I had to glue the pieces for her.  One day in the spring of her 3rd grade year, my hot glue technique was not up to her exacting standards.  So she decided to use the hot glue gun herself.  I still remember her smile and her saying, “I am so proud of myself! I got over my fear of the hot glue gun!’  Now, as a 5th grader, she is a confident builder.  She has an amazing, precise engineering mind.  I marvel at her talent.  

In a couple of weeks, school will end for the year, and these 5th graders will go on to Middle School.  I will not have them again in the Wonder Studio.  They will graduate to our school’s CFI – Center for Innovation.  And though wonderful things happen in the CFI at the middle and high school level, there is nothing as magical as the work in miniature that elementary students create in the Wonder Studio.  Every day I work alongside children, I am glad I can be a witness to their ingenuity, resourcefulness, and persistence.  They have taught me what it takes to keep alive that creative spirit.